Seven Ways to Take Control of Life as a Trainer

Sometimes it seems as though the world is spinning faster than one can keep up with. It seems out of control, and you don’t have any say in how your life will continue. That does not have to be the case. There are choices that can be made and things that can be done that will allow you to take control of life again.

Most people who are in the training and coaching business do it because they love to coach or train. Some of them like to be in front of people. Some want to help others be more successful. It can be a strong passion, or even life-fulfilling for some people.

If you have been in the industry very long (and working in a corporate environment either as a job, as a trainer or doing coaching), you know that when a company decides to save money, downsize or otherwise change things up, training and coaching is the usually the first thing that goes. It can be a frustrating time, and often the trainer is displaced into another department or let go completely.

It is time to stop letting others decide what is going to happen to us as coaches and trainers. We need to learn that we can take control. You can start working on this today and continue to work on it to get more and more control with more options moving forward.

There are seven things that will help you move forward and take control of your life as a trainer.

1. Decide What You Like About Training Be very clear about this. What is it you like: the hours, being in front of people, helping people, the travel, the respect from students, knowing you’re making a difference in people’s lives, seeing the a-ha from students, the money, not sitting at a desk, a different scenario every day.

Now, put your likes in order, maybe giving a percentage. Then, put a why next to each of them. This gives an even clearer vision of why you feel this way and can help clarify what you will be looking for. If you don’t know why you are doing something, you won’t have the passion and drive to move forward even if the going gets tough, so you really need to clarify this for yourself. It also helps you really appreciate what you do, and why you teach or coach.

These will be the things you will focus on changing as you take control of your life.

2. Decide What You Don’t Like About Training Taking control means trying to get more of the things you do like, but also eliminating some or all of the things you don’t. Deciding what you don’t like about training provides clarity on things to eliminate. This will give an exciting feeling of taking control.

Here are some things you might not like: too many hours, not enough hours, not getting to choose what to teach, not getting to choose where to teach, too much travel, not enough travel, not being respected, lugging equipment, waiting on expenses to be paid, and not having control over any part of the training. These are the things you want to eliminate or minimize in your training career.

3. Create Goals Some people are already very good at this and have probably used it in parts of their life, but maybe not in this part of their life because they figure “I am already teaching/coaching and that is what I want to do so I have met that goal.” They never realize that even though they are doing what they like, setting goals can make it even better because it can get them to create more of the positive parts of the training or coaching.

This step is not hard, because you already have a great start: You know what you want and don’t want. So now take those likes and dislikes and figure out how to turn them into goals. Get very clear about what training would look like if it were in an ideal state, and what you can do to make that happen.

For example, you might say, “I want to be in front of people doing more coaching or more training and or speaking.” Even though that is the idea, it is not clear enough, not specific enough to be a goal.

So the goal needs to be defined enough to work toward, powerful enough so you are driven toward accomplishing it, important enough so they will continue it even if obstacles get in your way, and vivid enough so you know what steps to take to attain it.

Thus, the goal might look something more like this: I will create an additional class that will help serve my customer’s/client’s needs and schedule one extra day for every location I train at to incorporate this new class. I will create the class by such and such a date, and present it on this date, which is my next scheduled training.

Let’s say instead that you want to get rid of a negative about training. For trainers, one of the huge negatives is lugging equipment. It can be a very aggravating, time-consuming and frustrating event when you has to take and set up, say, 12 computers everywhere you go to do training. So again, create a goal that will help eliminate this task. It may look like this: I will reduce the cost of training and using equipment by December of this year.

Then, you would set about to research how much training rooms are, find out how much it costs to ship your equipment, figure out how much time is spent setting the equipment up and think of how often hotel rooms or conference rooms from the client are not set up in a conducive training environment. By doing these things, you will find that the company you are working for will be able to save money, and you will have a lot less stress in your life.

Any goal that is going to help you work toward your dream of having control over your life as a trainer is going to be something you want to work toward. If you are not good at goal setting or follow-through, you may want to look at how to do this on the Internet, get a book about goal setting or hire a coach who will help in goal setting and give you an accountability partner to keep you on track.

4. Create Affirmations The goals are there. Now you have to create affirmations that will help bring those goals to fruition. Affirmations create a dynamic tension in your mind that helps get to the affirmed goal. It helps move you toward the motivation. There are several steps to affirmations. This is a powerful tool that you do not want to skip when working toward taking control of your life.

There are several parts to creating affirmations, and they need to be incorporated to get the best results:

The affirmation should be created with an “I am” statement.

They should be in the present tense. People tend to want to say what they are or what they want in the future tense. The mind can’t recognize that to help produce it, so you have to keep it in the present as that is all your mind truly recognizes.

For example, “I am happily presenting my speech to this group and getting great praise—or something even better.”

Read the affirmation at least once a day—twice if possible—usually when getting out of bed and right before going to sleep. This keeps it in the mind all the time. Your affirmations can even be recorded so they can be listened to while driving.

5. Asking This is the easiest concept that has ever been developed, yet it is the most underused. Asking is actually one thing that a lot of people fear. Think of some of the things people have to ask for in their lives: asking someone to marry them, asking for a raise and, a really hard one for most people, asking for help. Asking is the most rewarding, exciting and empowering thing you can do for yourself. Asking all